


Cruel Summer

by FoxCollector



Series: Les Jeux des Enfants [1]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Comfort, Copious references to the 90s miniseries, Deadlights (IT), Derry's history, Exploring, Friendship, Gen, Glass broken glass sharp as a razor, Guys I don't how to tag all that properly, Holding Hands, I hope this is scary, It's summer they should be having fun, Lots of that, Other, Pennywise is a monster so he monsters in this, Rated T for Trashmouth, References to child abuse in line with the source material, Sorry Not Sorry, Spiders, The power of friendship, abandoned buildings, but they're dealing with scary stuff instead, friends being there for each other, in line with canon crushes mostly, slight shipping if you squint, spot all the ships!, tbh there is definitely some pre-shipping set up in here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-09
Updated: 2019-10-09
Packaged: 2020-11-27 20:15:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 17,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20954282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FoxCollector/pseuds/FoxCollector
Summary: This is what summer is supposed to be like.The wind in her face, surrounded by friends, and nothing but blue sky above, and green on all sides.The blackened skeleton of some old building rises above the tree tops alongside them.--Or, a fun summer day gets interrupted when the Loser's Club goes exploring by Mike's house and runs into some trouble.





	1. Bill Denbrough and the Boys (and Girl) of Summer

**Author's Note:**

> Hi all! It's my first foray into this particular fandom. With the new movie out I got back into IT big time and now it's a problem. I really like horror so honestly this is the perfect thing for me, and I got a little excited.
> 
> This is supposed to be set after July 4th, but before they go to Neibolt, just for reference. I do hope it's a bit scary, but I also tried to throw in a lot of sappy friendship moments. Also I inadvertently implied that Mike has a crush on Bill so I'm gonna roll with it. I can get behind that XD. 
> 
> Special thanks to my brother for reading through this and trying to deliberately find things to complain about, and of course an extra special thanks to Tea_EarlGrey_Hot, who is a great friend and gave awesome feedback - and also gave me several of the chapter titles. You're the best!
> 
> **Anyone looking for edits, I just dropped the rating down to T because I was being a grandmother about it before. Any further edits will probably just be if/when I add this into a series.

It’s hot.

Only 11 AM and already there’s a stifling heat settling in close and making their shirts cling to their skin. Bill hopes it doesn’t get too much hotter, but when have they ever been that lucky?

Still, it’s starting to make him rethink his plan for the day. It had been his idea not to go to the quarry after all.

Beside him, Eddie shifts, and Bill can almost feel his frustration radiating from him like its own kind of heat. They’re still waiting for Beverly and Ben, and it really hasn’t been that long but it sure feels like it.

“Everything’s going to be melted by the time we get there,” Eddie says. “What if it goes bad and we get food poisoning?”

“It’ll be fine, we can put it in my fridge for a while,” Mike says.

Behind them, Bill hears Stan talking to Richie. “It was just weird, okay?”

“So tell me!” Richie urges.

“You can’t laugh,” Stan says.

Eddie shifts again, uncomfortable. “Isn’t that where you keep all the meat? Do you know how easy it would be to get salmonella from just sharing a fridge with –”

“No, it’s not,” Mike says. “We have a different fridge for that. You’ll be fine, okay?”

Bill is honestly a bit impressed with Mike’s patience. He hopes Mike knows Eddie doesn’t mean anything personal by it.

“Okay.” Eddie looks mildly less uncomfortable.

“Wait, what?” Richie exclaims.

“You promised you wouldn’t laugh,” Stan says.

“I’m not laughing!” Richie says, but he’s about to make a liar of himself.

“Don’t make me say it again,” Stan says, almost pleads.

“It’s just,” Eddie says. “My mom would kill me if she knew I was even going to your house.”

Mike looks a bit hurt at that.

“Because of the meat,” Eddie says. “She says that –”

“Y-your mom would kill you if she knew you went swimming in the q-quarry last weekend too,” Bill says.

Eddie scowls at him.

Right. ‘Your mom’ things are only okay when they’re from Richie.

“Sorry, Eds. W-what did you tell her?” Bill tries.

“They _grilled_ you?” Richie says loudly.

Eddie looks back to glare at Richie, then says. “I said I was going to your place again. My mom likes you.” He shrugs.

Bill feels a little proud of that. Of course, it probably has something to do with the fact that, unlike Richie, Bill always promises to take care of Eddie, and he likes to think that he does. But then again, he had liked to think he took care of Georgie, too.

“Your mom doesn’t have to worry so much,” Mike says. He puts an arm around Eddie in a gesture that clearly embarrasses him, but Bill knows Eddie well enough to know that he appreciates it.

Richie bursts out laughing.

“Stop it,” Stan says. “You promised, Rich.” He looks intensely embarrassed and doesn’t meet Bill’s eyes when he looks back.

“I’m sorry, I can’t –” Richie says.

“I shouldn’t have told you,” Stan says accusingly.

“No, no. I’m sorry Stan, it’s just, it’s just –” Richie is almost breathless with laughter. “You were a fish! And not even a cool one, like one of those angler fish, you were a stupid goldfish!”

Mike and Eddie turn to watch them too.

“A fish?” Eddie asks.

“Stan dreamt –”

“Shut up Richie,” Stan says. “It was a stupid dream.”

“Well now you’ve got to tell us,” Mike says.

Stan shifts.

“You were a fish?” Eddie asks again.

“You can tell us, we won’t l-laugh like Richie,” Bill takes a stab at his friend.

But really, he shouldn’t make promises he can’t keep.

“I dreamt I was a fish,” Stan admits, defeated. “In a bag. And you guys carried me around all day at school. And then Bowers threw me on a grill.”

Beside Bill Mike puts a hand over his mouth and Eddie bites his lip hard. Bill feels his mouth twisting into a smile.

Stan looks utterly betrayed. “Alright, go ahead and laugh.”

“N-no. I’m sure it was really – really scary,” Bill finishes lamely.

“Yeah, thanks, Bill.” Stan crosses his arms.

Richie snorts. “He made you a fish-stick.”

“Who made fish-sticks?” Beverly asks. She drops the kickstand on her bike, stopping it from falling against Mike and Eddie.

“N-no one. Hi,” Bill says.

“Hey.” She smiles, tucking short hair behind her ear. It doesn’t stay.

“Hi guys. Sorry I’m late.” Ben’s voice comes from Bill’s left.

“Haystack!” Richie waves, already distracted from poor Stan.

“Alright, so we’re all here?” Mike asks. Rhetorical question. “And we got everything?”

“Snacks.” Richie points to Eddie. “Reading material.” He points at himself. “Goldfish.” He points at Stan.

Ben and Bev exchange a look.

“Knock it off,” Stan mutters.

“That’s it. Now, tally ho, my good fellows!” Richie announces.

“We’ll follow you,” Bill says to Mike.

He lags back a bit to ride next to Stan, if only because it makes Richie fall back to talk to Ben about some comic he’d been reading.

If Stan looks a bit grateful, that’s just between them.


	2. Beverly Marsh and the Summer Sun

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys they wouldn't let me put the aggressive amount of balloons I wanted in here. 
> 
> I had balloons as chapter dividers in the working document, but I'm bad at technology and couldn't quite get it right when posting on here. My deepest apologies, but you will have to imagine the balloons.

The ride out to Mike’s place isn’t nearly as long as Beverly was expecting it to be. But then that makes sense, since Mike makes deliveries on his bike almost every day and never complains.

It’s a pretty scenic ride, though. The woods start when they pass the last house, and get thick when they cross the town line.

Beverly likes this.

This is what summer is supposed to be like.

The wind in her face, surrounded by friends, and nothing but blue sky above, and green on all sides.

The blackened skeleton of some old building rises above the tree tops alongside them.

“What’s that?” she asks, pointing out at the woods and nearly hitting Eddie in the face. She pats his shoulder by way of apology.

“The Iron Works.” Mike’s voice sounds abruptly raw.

“The Iron Works?” Ben says, and Beverly swears she can hear him gearing up for an explanation.

“That’s where all those people died,” Ben says. “Remember I showed you the article about it?”

Yep, there it is.

There’s silence in the group, and Beverly wonders if she isn’t the only one who forgot the finer details of this particular tragedy.

Ben sighs. “There was a huge explosion there back in 1908. More than 100 people died, most of them were kids, because they were doing an Easter egg hunt...” Ben trails off and then clears his throat. “I didn’t know you lived so close to them.”

“Not that close!” Mike insists.

He does, in fact, live quite close to them.

It’s not long after that that they pull down a long driveway and follow Mike past a barn and then a garage and finally stop in front of an old red wood and stone house.

The yard smells awful, and Beverly sees Eddie discreetly take a puff from his inhaler beside her.

“Home sweet home.” Mike shrugs. He hops off his bike. “Uh, I can take the snacks and put them in the fridge.”

Eddie takes off his backpack and hands it to Mike.

“No grand tour?” Richie is already off his bike.

“My grandpa’s sleeping. It’s his day off so I don’t really wanna wake him up,” Mike says, a bit awkwardly.

“That’s okay,” Beverly says. She’s no stranger to trying to sneak around her own house. “We can stay out here if you want.”

Mike pauses, then, “You can come in. I’ll just show you the bathroom and the kitchen and stuff. If you can be quiet.”

Beverly is pretty sure that’s directed at Richie.

“I can be quiet,” Richie says. Complains really.

Eddie and Stan both give him a look.

“What?” he shrugs.

They follow Mike inside quietly, like a line of mice avoiding a cat.

Inside, Mike’s house is dark, the kind of darkness that comes from silence etched into wallpaper. It’s not a bad thing, necessarily, but it makes Bev feel like she doesn’t belong somehow.

The landing is large enough to fit all of them, and there’s a coat closet on one side, and a pantry on the far side by the kitchen doorway. To the right, almost immediately, is a staircase leading down into blackness.

“That’s the offices, down there. For bookkeeping,” Mike says quietly. “Careful you don’t fall.”

Richie mimes pushing Eddie down, and accidentally bumps him. Eddie yelps and then latches onto his arm.

“Don’t do that!” Eddie somehow manages to be both shrill and quiet.

Bill shoots Richie a look.

“It wasn’t me!” Richie argues, trying to kick off his shoes with Eddie glued to his side.

Beverly ignores their whispered bickering in the background and follows Mike deeper inside.

The kitchen opens up after the landing; a long room with an island between counters on either side, and a long wooden table towards the far end. There’s a lot of space there, and it makes Bev wonder if Mike has, or had, a large family. There’s a doorway on the right, and Mike gestures vaguely as they pass it.

“That’s the dining room and living room.” He points to a hallway leading from the back of the kitchen. “The bathroom is the first door on the right. Grandpa’s room is the last on the left, so don’t go down too far.”

“Where’s your room?” Bill asks.

“Just across from the bathroom,” Mike says.

“Can we see it?” Ben asks.

“Uh, maybe later,” Mike says.

“Your house is huge!” Richie leans around the corner to look at the living room, having shaken off Eddie.

“Thanks?” Mike frowns. “My granddad built it, after the war.”

“Wow.” Beverly’s never met Mike’s grandfather, but she imagines him to be an impressive man.

“We, uh, made lunch for everybody,” Mike pulls open the fridge. He unloads twinkies and chocolates from Eddie’s backpack, and then pulls out a bag. “Any allergies?”

Eddie takes a breath.

“N-no,” Bill says. “At least not that we know of.”

“Cool,” Mike says. He gives Eddie his empty backpack back.

As nice and cool as it is inside Mike’s house, Beverly is still relieved when they file back outside after Mike.

“Is th-there a good spot for us to eat?” Bill asks.

“Yeah, preferably somewhere that doesn’t smell like Eddie’s mom’s –”

There’s the distinct sound of someone elbowing Richie.

“Somewhere we won’t be too loud,” Beverly says.

The yard is huge, and honestly beautiful, even if it does smell like sheep, and there’s a few places that look well shaded enough to keep them out of the sun.

They settle on a spot just inside the tree line and make a proper picnic out of it. If only because Eddie refuses to sit on the ground until Mike gets them a blanket to sit on.


	3. Mike Hanlon and the Old Iron Works

“They felt its breath hot and horrible against their faces, but at that moment they released the stones and ran out of the cave. Now they were back home, but nothing could change the way they felt. They had learned to be strong together. They had beaten the dragon with their magic stones and nothing would ever be the same again,” Bill finishes.

Mike takes a deep breath. “Damn. That was good.”

Eddie looks up from where he’s been practically laying across Stan and Richie. “You changed the ending?”

“Y-yeah,” Bill admits.

“I thought they didn’t make it out,” Richie says. Propping himself up on his elbows.

“Nuh-uh, most of them did,” Eddie says.

“How many times did you change it?” Richie asks.

Bill flushes. “A-a few.”

“I thought it was great,” Bev says.

“This one’s my favourite.” Eddie sighs. “You should write it down.”

“It was what G-georgie th-th –” he falters. “It was what G-g-g – shit.”

Mike reaches out and grabs Bill’s shoulder in what he hopes is a supportive gesture.

No one makes him spit it out, they all know what he means anyway.

“You really could be a writer,” Ben says earnestly.

“If he learns how to stick an ending!” Richie pushes his glasses up.

Eddie shakes his head and rolls away from Richie, sitting up.

They sit for a moment, or maybe longer than that, enjoying full stomachs and the last thoughts about Bill’s story, until the heat is too distracting and it’s impossible to remain still.

“What do we do now?” Stan asks.

“We could play a game?” Mike suggests. He honestly doesn’t have anything specific in mind, but he thinks he could maybe find a deck of cards.

“Like hide and seek?” Ben asks.

“I think we’re a little bit old for hide and seek,” Richie says, and it comes across as a little condescending. He looks out towards the trees, as though considering whether or not they actually _are _too old for hide and seek, and Eddie and Beverly follow his line of sight.

A few metres out and the space between the trees shrinks, and the ground is thick with underbrush.

“What’s out there?” Beverly asks.

“I don’t really know, I wasn’t allowed to play out there when I was little… And then when I got older. . . It just didn’t seem like a lot of fun without friends,” He’s probably said too much, but he doesn’t regret it. Not when his friends were so excited to come out here with him. And not when Bill gives him that look.

“Well you’ve got plenty of friends now,” Bill says.

Richie points dramatically. “And we’ll scour those woods to the ground!”

Stan wrinkles his nose. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

At the same time, Eddie asks, “Is there poison ivy out there? Or poison oak?”

“Uh. I don’t think so,” Mike says, but honestly he has no clue.

Eddie and Stan share a look.

“Come on guys, we should check it out,” Bev says. “It’d be fun.”

“What are we supposed to do out there anyway?” Ben asks.

“_What_ do we do?” Richie scoffs. “More like _who_ do we do, am I right?” He raises his hand for a high five.

Stan rolls his eyes and pulls Richie’s hand back down.

Bill completely ignores the comment. “W-we explore. We can split up and each go in a different way. T-then meet back up and… make a map or something.”

Ben perks up. “Okay, yeah, that sounds fun.”

“No, it sounds lame,” Richie says. “Who wants to make a _map_ for fun?”

“How big are these woods anyway?” Stan asks Mike, pointedly talking over Richie.

“I really don’t know. Can’t be too big though,” Mike says.

“I don’t wanna be alone out there, what if something happens?” Eddie asks.

“So nobody goes alone,” Beverly says. “We can use the buddy system.”

“Is this really how we wanna spend the afternoon?” Richie asks. “Wandering around the woods?

“Yeah,” Bill says.

“Yeah,” Ben says.

“Yeah,” Bev says.

“Well okay.” Richie sighs.

“Maybe I should just stay here. Like a home base,” Eddie says.

“Oh no you don’t,” Richie throws an arm around Eddie’s shoulders, pulling him off balance. “If I have to go out, so do you, Eddie Spaghetti.”

“Don’t call me that!” Eddie protests, and tries to squirm away from Richie in what Mike thinks is a bit of a token effort, Eddie never manages to pull away.

Stan rolls his eyes again. “I’ll make sure they don’t talk each other to death.”

Beverly and Bill are sharing a look, all shy smiles and downcast eyelashes. They look like the cover of Mike’s grandmother’s old romance novels and it’s awkward. Mike looks away and catches Ben’s gaze. He can almost feel the disappointment and dejection in the other boy.

Mike frowns.

He’s not entirely sure why he does it. It’s not his job to help Ben spend the day with his obvious crush, but if he’s honest, he sort of likes the idea of spending the afternoon with Bill. “Hey, uh, Bill. You wanna go with me?”

Bill blinks in surprise, almost like he’s going to protest, and then smiles. “Y-yeah, okay.”

Beverly smiles a bit more wistfully. “Looks like it’s you and me, Ben from sosh.”

Ben perks up a bit at that. “Sure!”

“So how long do we … ‘explore’ for?” Stan asks. Mike can hear the quotation marks around the word.

“A-as long as it takes,” Bill says.

No one seems satisfied with that answer.

“Until 3,” Bill tries again. “Try to r-remember anything cool you find.”

“What if we get lost?” Eddie starts. “My mom says that this family got lost in the woods and even though they weren’t far from their car they all died and by the time they were found they were –”

“We w-won’t get lost, Eds. Okay?” Bill says. Like maybe he can single handedly keep them all safe.

Eddie takes a puff from his inhaler.

“Everybody ready?” Bill asks. He’s far more serious than he needs to be.

There’s a few nods from around the group, and then they split up. Ben and Bev head to the left, Stan, Richie and Eddie head to the right. Which leaves Mike and Bill to go straight ahead.

“W-where do you wanna go?” Bill asks, as though Mike has any idea what he’s doing.

Mike shrugs. “I dunno.”

They set out to wander a bit pointlessly, scratching their shins on the undergrowth with nothing ahead but the same trees, over and over again. It’s nice at first. They talk about nothing in particular, and there’s no other noise but the slight breeze through the tree branches, rushing water and the crack of twigs beneath their feet. The shade from the trees is nice enough, but there are a lot of bugs and after a while Mike starts to get a little bored with the wonders of nature.

Up above the tree tops, the Iron Works looms gradually closer until Mike can’t take his eyes off of it. They seem to be heading right for it, and he suddenly wishes they were headed in any other direction. He drags his eyes away almost guiltily, with half a mind to ask Bill to turn back, but it’s too late.

“You wanna go th-there?” Bill gestures.

“No! No, I mean.” Mike tries to shrug nonchalantly. “We could. I just. I’ve never gone in. I pass it every day but…”

“You don’t want to go in alone?” Bill guesses.

Mike doesn’t want to go in _at all_. “Yeah.”

“W-we can go in if you want. Prove there’s nothing in there.” And the way he says it makes it seem like a perfectly rational idea.

“I dunno. You heard what Ben said. About all those people. It could be dangerous,” Mike trails off.

It is a terrible idea, really.

But somehow this was the exact wrong thing to say because Bill sets his jaw in determination, and there’s a glint in his eye that says he’s got plans to invade the Iron Works.

“Let’s go then,” Bill says. “It’ll be-”

“If you say ‘it’ll be fun’ I’m leaving right now.” Mike deadpans.

Bill smiles wryly. “It might be. W-wouldn’t it be better to prove it’s not scary?”

Great. Famous last words.

But Mike is a little bit embarrassed about the idea that Bill thinks he’s scared of the Iron Works. He is, but somehow all his fear feels childish when Bill says the word ‘scary’.

“Bill,” Mike starts. He wants to protest on the basis of Derry being a bad place. On the basis that they know there’s something wrong. On the basis of _It_. But he suspects these are all the reasons Bill wants to go, and Bill is already starting towards the bent black shapes of the old buildings.

And hell if Mike will let him go alone.

There is no gradual thinning of trees and clearing of bush; they are in the thick of the woods until suddenly they are not. The trees stop abruptly, as though someone has been maintaining the line.

The ground around the building is sunken, and the grass grows towards it in a scatter shot pattern, like it’s been burned recently instead of almost a hundred years ago.

The whole thing looks… wrong. Out of place in the greenery around it, and it looms up like a large blackened corpse with eyelike windows broken out in the façade of the second floor.

It’s quiet. Mike always imagined what the wind would sound like whistling through the old bones, but he can’t hear it at all now.

“I got a bad feeling about this, Bill,” Mike says.

The wreckage glowers down at them.

“We c-came this far,” Bill says. He steps through the grass to the old ruins of a wall, cracked open wide enough for them to enter.

Mike follows him in, even though everything in him is telling him not to. To turn back while he still can.

A rock shifts under Bill’s foot and he slips. Mike reaches out and catches his elbow as Bill instinctively reaches for him. He steadies his friend.

“You okay?” Mike asks, and he keeps his voice low, like he’s in a church.

“Y-yeah, thanks.” Bill’s hand slides from Mike’s shoulder to his arm, but he doesn’t let go.

It’s hot inside. There is no cool shade offered by the high walls, and Mike thinks it’s actually hotter inside than outside. The heat seems contained, like what’s left of the walls have been gathering heat from the sun to radiate their own low-level fire. When Mike brushes his fingers along the surface of the wall it sears his skin and he almost expects his hand to actually come away burned.

The heat makes it a bit hard to breathe.

Bill bends to rub at his ankle after a few steps. “M-maybe this wasn’t such a hot idea.”

“Oh now you wanna admit that?” Mike says, and it comes out loud. Louder than he wanted it to and that’s when he realizes there’s something wrong.

The silence.

All around the old building there was no sound. No birds chirping. No insects. No wind in the leaves and no wind at all.

The whole place was dead silent.

And he’d just broken that silence in what seemed like a big way.

There’s a loud creak, as though in response to Mike’s voice.

“Shit. Sorry,” Mike says.

Bill gives him an odd look. “Let’s just go.”

They turn back to the wall behind them only to find that it has knitted itself back together. It looks … whole. New.

“What,” Mike tries to ask but it dies on his tongue.

Around them, the wrecked building shifts, and the sound is the mechanical click of rusted and broken bones slotting into place, like the whole thing is waking up.

“Bill –”

“I s-s-see it too,” Bill says.

And for half a second Mike has no idea what he’s talking about. He doesn’t see anything – but then, oh, then he sees it.

There’s a hand sliding around the doorway to the right. Long charred fingers with too many joints reaching out to grasp at the wall.

With their exit sealed off, and something lurking around the corner, the only way to go is deeper into the building – away from the outside, but also away from whatever else is in there with them.

“This isn’t happening,” Mike says. Denial has always been a strong suit of his.

Bill tugs on his arm and they tumble out into a wide open room.

The floor is blackened with soot and the air is heavy with the smell of burning fat.

Mike is sure he’ll feel smoke hot in his lungs in another moment, will feel the air close in around him.

Something bone thin and metallic black pulls itself around the corner. It’s tall, tall enough that it crouches on many jointed legs just to fit in the room.

It has no eyes but Mike knows it can see them.

He pushes Bill as he turns fully, trying to urge his friend on.

“Nevermind,” he says, about nothing in particular and everything at once. “Let’s go.”

Bill tries to say something but trips over the word too many times and gives up. It doesn’t matter. Mike knows what he wants to say.

“Yeah, I know.”

They’re fucked.


	4. Richie Tozier and the Bad Idea

“No!” Eddie says. He holds his arms up like he can block out Richie’s bad idea.

“Stan?” And Richie knows it’s a bad idea, really, it’s just… he’s bored, and he’s sick of wandering around listening to Eddie whine about the cuts on his legs getting infected, and ‘what if there are ticks?!’, and ‘ohmygodwasthatawasp’ or Stan with his constant ‘that looks like poison ivy’ or ‘oh! A brown thrush!’ – he loves them both but it’s times like this he wonders why anyone thinks he’s the annoying one. He’d very much like to throttle them both.

And the house doesn’t look _that_ old.

Okay, it does.

It looks like it’s literally falling apart, but still.

“I don’t know,” Stan says. “I’m with Eddie.”

“Oh come on!” Richie says. “Don’t be pussies – it’s just a house.”

“It’s disgusting!” Eddie says. And that’s maybe uncalled for. “It’s a death trap!”

“We could get hurt,” Stan says, more logically and a fair bit more reasonably.

That’s fair.

“So we’ll be careful!” Richie insists. “Are we men or are we mice?”

Stan and Eddie share a look. “We’re mice,” they say together.

Richie is almost impressed. “Then let’s act like mice and get in there! Unless you’re gonna be babies about it, then I guess we can go back now and tell the others we found a house you were too chicken to go into.” He shrugs.

Eddie’s expression shifts to something Richie can’t quite read, but he knows he’s winning when he sees that face. “… I didn’t say I wouldn’t go in,” Eddie says.

_Liar_, Richie thinks. But he’s still glad for it.

Stan’s eyebrows go up. He opens his mouth like he wants to argue and instead just sighs. “Unbelievable.”

And Richie knows he’s won. Awesome.

He steps up onto the porch a little too enthusiastically, and Stan follows him, but doesn’t bother hiding a glare.

Eddie hesitates before stepping up. “But – but, look for nails and stuff. We could get tetanus,” Eddie says, squeezing his palms together. “My mom said there was this guy and he stepped on a nail and it went right through his shoe and he got tetanus and he died and –” He stops abruptly and swallows thickly. Gulps really.

It makes Richie look over at him. His eyes are fixed on the upper level, brows furrowed like he’s trying to make sense of something. It’s a bit… adorable. Richie smothers the thought.

Stan puts a hand on Eddie’s shoulder and tugs him up onto the porch. The whole thing creaks with the movement, and for a second Richie thinks the porch will give way, but it doesn’t.

“Think anybody’s home?” Richie tugs the old door open. It squeals and drags open off-kilter, and Richie isn’t sure whether it was unlocked or if the door was just too rotten to work right. He holds the door open and mock bows to usher Stan and Eddie inside.

Neither of them move.

“Just spiders.” Stan’s voice cracks.

“What if there are poisonous spiders?” Eddie asks, voice a melodramatic whisper.

Richie rolls his eyes. “There aren’t poisonous spiders here.” He steps inside and the whole house creaks.

“Richie!” Eddie says.

“What?” And really, Richie shouldn’t be enjoying this so much.

“Be careful! What if the floor breaks?” Eddie hesitates in the doorway, Stan at his shoulder.

Richie tests the floor, pushing down. The boards seem to sink beneath his feet, and it honestly makes him a bit uncomfortable but it seems sturdy enough.

“It’s fine,” he says. He hops up and down, hoping that the floor actually is fine. It holds firm. “Totally fine.”

Eddie steps out slowly, testing the boards before each step and Stan follows, a bit more certain in his footing, but pointedly stepping close to where Eddie has already tested the floor.

“You’re an idiot,” Stan says.

Richie shrugs.

“Okay, we came inside. Can we go now?” Eddie asks.

“Really? Come on, we haven’t even done anything yet!” Richie actually is getting exasperated now. “It’s a small house! We go through it and then we can tell Mike about it and he can set up a summer home.”

Stan sighs. “In for a penny.”

“Are you serious?” Eddie asks.

Richie wishes he were as good with words as Bill. Bill would say something like ‘we won’t let anything happen to you’ and it would sound so good and genuine and would make both Stan and Eddie follow him without question.

All Richie can think to say is, “Christ, no wonder you’re still a virgin.”

“Shut up, Richie!” Eddie turns red.

It has the intended effect of getting Eddie to come further into the house.

“How old do you think this house is?” Stan asks. He reaches out to run his fingers over faded and peeling wallpaper. If there was a pattern to it, it’s long gone.

“Hundred years?” Richie shrugs. “I don’t know, Ben’s the history guy.”

“The windows are all broken,” Eddie says. “Don’t-”

“I’m not gonna cut my wrists with it, Eds,” Richie says.

Glass cracks under Stan’s feet.

The house is dark, even with the afternoon sun spilling in through broken windows there’s a shadow to the air.

“At least it’s not so hot in here,” Stan says. He’s moved to about the center of the room.

There are broken piles of rotted wood in the corners, glass strewn across the floor, and some kind of fabric piled high beneath one of the windows, which could be curtains or an old rug. There’s no furniture left in the room, and it makes Richie think maybe someone chopped it up for firewood.

“See?” Richie says, as though that makes up for how creepy it is inside. “It’s not so bad. Now who wants to go to the kitchen?”

Neither Stan nor Eddie look particularly fond of this idea, but they go with him anyway.

There are cobwebs draped across the doorway to the kitchen, and Richie pushes Stan through first.

“Hey!” Stan says, barely ducking in time to avoid a face-full of webbing. He turns around to glare at Richie and then looks to the side instead. “There are doors!”

“Like old parlour doors?” Eddie asks, and, ducking way lower than he needs to, he follows Stan into the kitchen.

“Yeah. See the panes? Like it had windows.” Stan is pointing now.

“Cool,” Eddie says.

“It’s just a door.” Richie rolls his eyes. He ducks under the spider webs and turns to see what they find so interesting.

It really is just a door, double doors, swung open and hanging from the hinges on one side. There are panes of broken glass in the frames, and the edges stick out sharp and uninviting. Richie doesn’t see what’s so special about them, they’re just doors.

“Huh. Neat.” Richie turns back to the kitchen.

“My aunt has doors like that on her kitchen. Her house is really old. Like 200 years old,” Eddie says.

“So is this place even older than that?” Richie asks. “I mean look at it. There’s no fridge. No microwave. No oven.”

“I think that’s an oven,” Stan points at a large black thing in the corner of the room. “I don’t think it’s that old. Just abandoned.”

“That’s an oven?” Richie eyes it skeptically. It’s stout and rounded, large enough to fit a particularly fat turkey. He doesn’t really know how old timey ovens work, they’re not exactly his specialty when it comes to history, but it looks like there’s a second door for wood. Or coal. Whatever people used in ye olden days.

“Looks like the kind of oven you could fit a kid in.” The floor cracks under Richie’s feet as he goes over to the oven. “Think there are bones in there?”

He grabs hold of the handle and tugs. It doesn’t budge.

“Richie!” Eddie hisses. “Don’t open it, are you insane?”

He pulls a little harder and the door opens with a pop and a grating sound. A large cloud of dust billows out and sends them all into a coughing fit. Richie squeezes his eyes shut. He’s going to have to clean his glasses now for sure. He hears Eddie puffing on his inhaler and there’s a clatter like someone is stumbling.

“Richie!” Stan sounds disgusted.

Richie rubs at his eyes, pulling his glasses off and squinting at his friends. “Oops.”

He tries to wipe his glasses on his shirt but smears the soot around on the lenses. His shirt is covered in it too.

Stan pulls his glasses out of his hands a little more aggressively than he needs to, and cleans them on his own shirt. A moment later he sets them crookedly on Richie’s face.

Sometimes Richie remembers why he loves that weirdo.

“That was disgusting!” Eddie gags. “I can taste it, we could be eating – who knows how old that was, or what that was – we could be eating –”

Richie rolls his eyes. “We’re not gonna die from dust, Eds.”

“It was gross though,” Stan says.

“Yeah, alright,” Richie admits. He turns mostly to Eddie. “Sorry, I didn’t know it was gonna do that.”

Eddie sniffs and takes another puff from his inhaler.

“Should we go upstairs?” Richie asks, trying to change the subject.

Stan wrinkles his nose. “And then we can go?”

“And then we can go.” Richie rolls his eyes. “Besides, maybe there’s cool stuff up there.”

Eddie shakes his head, but he follows them anyway.

The stairs creak on every step, but hold firm, even when Stan steps on the same stair as Richie. The house really can’t be all that old, Richie reasons.

At the top of the stairs there’s a hallway that branches off to three rooms.

“Should we split up?” Richie asks.

“No!” Eddie says. He grabs hold of Richie’s arm as though Richie was immediately going to run off.

“Alright, alright.” Richie definitely isn’t enjoying this a bit. This definitely wasn’t what he was hoping for when he saw this old house. No one could prove it if it was, and he would deny it anyway.

The first room on the left is a sitting room of some kind. There are several chairs still intact, with green lining that might have been an expensive material at one time. Or maybe it’s moss.

There’s a bookshelf in one corner, with rotting books jumbled in a pile where the center shelf has given way, a table stands in the other corner, curled papers scattered on the top.

“Cool,” Stan says. “It’s like a reading room.”

“Like a study?” Eddie asks.

“Yeah, kinda.” Stan carefully makes his way over to the bookshelf. He crouches down and pulls out a book. Or the spine of a book. “These didn’t hold up so well.”

Eddie pulls Richie’s arm and then lets go to wander over to the desk. Richie follows him.

Eddie pokes at one of the papers, yellowed and brittle. “Neither did these.”

Any writing on the pages has long since faded away, but there are a few traces of colour here and there.

Richie doesn’t really care about the papers. Or the books. Or the stupid house even. His arm tingles.

He looks over at Stan, to see what he’s doing and Stan gives him an odd look.

“What?” Richie asks, maybe a bit louder than he means to.

“Nothing,” Stan says. He heads out into the hallway ahead of them and into the next room on the right. He seems to have forgotten to be nervous about the state of the house.

Richie follows, Eddie trailing behind him.

The next room looks like a nursery. There are ugly shapes in the wallpaper, and a crib in the corner of the room. A rocking chair is tipped over and the rug shoved over against one wall.

The room smells terrible.

“What is that smell?” Stan plugs his nose.

Eddie copies him, and wanders a little farther into the room, Stan at his side.

“There’s something in there,” Eddie says, voice nasally and muffled by his fist. He’s looking down into the crib. He reaches for his fanny-pack.

Richie steps up between them.

There _is_ something in the crib. Something bundled up in the browned sheets. He reaches in.

“Don’t touch it!” Stan says.

Richie pokes the sheet back just a bit, and it unfurls, the body of a large curled up spider rolls sideways. One leg snaps off as it bumps against the side of the crib. Richie jumps.

Stan curses and scrambles backwards, floor creaking beneath his feet. Eddie yelps, breath coming in short gasps as he tugs harder on the zipper to his fanny-pack and tries to back away at the same time.

“Is it dead?” Stan asks.

There’s a thump, and Richie looks behind him to see that Eddie has fallen backwards, one hand to his chest as he takes in gasping breaths.

“It’s dead,” Richie says.

“It’s huge! It’s – it’s the size of my head!” Stan brushes at himself as though he’s covered in spiders now.

“It’s dead,” Richie repeats.

Eddie wheezes. “Ohmygod. Where’s my inhaler?” He pulls out a pack of pills, band-aids, a twinkie, and reaches in again to come out empty-handed.

“Guys! Where’s my – where’s – I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe I’m gonna –” He flutters his hands at his throat.

For a heartbeat Richie freezes.

Stan is already on his knees beside Eddie, tugging at the fanny-pack. “You’re gonna be okay.”

“I can’t.” Eddie gasps.

“Richie, it’s not here,” Stan says.

Richie snaps to attention. “You – you must have dropped it somewhere.”

Eddie looks like he might cry and it makes Richie’s heart hurt.

He knows Eddie literally just had it. He was just using it, but where? The kitchen? Did he see Eddie use it at all since then?

“I’ll get it,” he says.

He wants more than anything to stay with Eddie and calm him down, to send Stan to find the inhaler, but he’s pretty sure he knows where it is. And besides, this will help Eddie, and that’s all Richie wants.

“I’ll be right back!” Richie says, and he leaves them alone.


	5. Ben Hanscom and the Bunker

Ben has no idea what to say.

He’d really wanted to go with Beverly, but now that they’re alone together he has no clue what to do. He likes exploring, really. And he likes being with Bev. But he’s nervous and he’s sweating and he’s probably really gross. She probably wishes she’d gotten to go with Bill like she wanted before Mike asked to go with him instead.

Ben is grateful to Mike for that. Or was, before he started regretting it. Now he’s starting to think, unfairly perhaps, that Mike had ulterior motives for splitting them up. 

He sighs.

“What’s up, new kid?” Bev turns around.

The canopy of trees above them blocks out the sunlight and makes her hair look dark.

“Nothin’.” Ben lies. “Just hot out here.”

“We should have just gone to the quarry,” Bev says.

Ben’s not sure he could have handled that again, but the idea of the cool water is a pleasant one. “Yeah.”

“So, is there anything out here?” Beverly asks him.

“What?”

“Like… you know. You read all that cool historical stuff. Is there anything else out here?” Beverly asks.

“You think that’s cool?” Ben perks up a bit.

“As far as hobbies go, there are worse ones to have,” she says.

“Uh, there’s the Iron Works… like we saw. But that’s the other way. I don’t think there’s really anything else out here,” Ben says.

He could be wrong though. There was a lot of stuff he didn’t read, or didn’t read as closely.

“Well, we’ll just have to see about that.” Beverly comes back over beside Ben and nudges him.

It makes him feel warm and fuzzy inside, and he can’t help but smile.

They start walking again.

“S-so,” he starts awkwardly. “What are some of your hobbies?”

She shrugs. “I like to read. And play piano. Kind of. I have a keyboard.”

“I bet you’re good at it then,” Ben says. Blurts it out, really.

She laughs. “Not really. At least, not yet. I only really get to practice when Daddy isn’t home.”

Oh. Yeah. Ben tries to change the subject just a bit. “Do you want to be a musician when you grow up?”

“I don’t know. Not really. I hadn’t really thought of it much.” She shrugs.

“Well I bet you could do it if you wanted,” Ben says.

They step around a particularly scraggly bush and enter a small clearing.

It’s nice to not be scraping up his legs for a change, but the heat from the sun hits like a weight on his skin the moment he steps out.

“Read about that anywhere?” Beverly points out to a small building nestled into the middle of the clearing.

Huh.

“No,” Ben says. He steps closer, trying to make out what kind of building it is.

A shed?

No it’s a little bigger than that.

“It looks like a…” Bev trails off.

“A bunker?” Ben frowns. He doesn’t remember reading about any bunkers in the area. Maybe someone had built their own survival bunker in the middle of the woods? Or maybe it was a nuclear bunker, in case of war with Russia.

“Why would there be a bunker in the middle of the woods?” Beverly asks.

“I don’t know. But I don’t remember reading about one,” Ben says.

“Should we go inside?” Bev steps closer to it.

“Can we?” Ben asks. Is it proper to go into someone else’s bunker? Although from the looks of it, it must be abandoned. He does kind of want to see what kind of bunker it is. If it even is a bunker at all.

There’s something about the way the bricks are set against one another that strikes Ben as particularly uninviting. It’s not like a place like this would be for visitors anyway, but it doesn’t look like the kind of place where anyone would want to stay.

“Yeah, why not?” Beverly grabs hold of the door handle and pulls hard. It opens easily and she stumbles back a bit. “Oops.”

Ben looks in around her.

Inside, the bunker is dark. The daylight extends towards the back wall, revealing it to be fairly small, and Ben wonders if there are other rooms inside. Bev lets go of the door and it starts swinging shut. Ben grabs for it and barely manages to grab it as it knocks into her.

“Ouch!”

“Sorry,” Ben says. “I guess we gotta prop it open with something.”

Beverly steps back out. “Wait here.” She disappears around the side of the building.

Ben cranes his head, but he can’t see where she’s gone. He looks back into the bunker. It’s not entirely empty, but he can’t make out enough details to see what the shapes against the far walls are. He reaches in along the wall and finds a switch, but nothing happens. Not surprising.

The corners are dark, but there are a few places where he thinks there are little spots of light, as though there are holes in the roof. The roof, from what he can see, is wooden, and there are spots where it seems to be rotting.

“Here!” Bev drops a large chunk of cement down and nudges it with her foot until it’s holding open the door.

“Where’d you find that?” Ben asks.

“Saw it on the way over. Now we can go inside.” She breezes past him, and Ben feels his heart lift.

“Thanks,” he says, and follows her inside.

The air is stale, despite the open door and the holes in the roof, but Ben supposes it’s been closed off for a long time now.

He stays as much in the light as possible, following to where it dies and stopping there.

He doesn’t see any doors along the wall. Maybe it is just a large shed, or a storage house?

“See anything interesting?” Bev asks. She’s stepped out of the light entirely, and Ben almost can’t make out her face.

Ben shakes his head.

She picks up something from the ground and holds it up, coming closer to see it better in the light. It’s a shard of glass, and she tosses it into the corner. “Watch your step.”

Ben steps out into the darkness.

Once his eyes adjust, Ben can see pretty well. The holes in the ceiling do help in some areas, and he can make out that most of what he thought were shapes are just shadows burned into the walls. There’s a single old table with a few tools on it, but they look rusty, and when Ben picks one up it stains his hand.

There’s really nothing in there. Which is a shame.

It seems well built, if not well maintained, and Ben wonders if it used to be a military bunker of some kind. Maybe they could have stored arms or ammunition here? Not that Derry would ever have needed that kind of stuff.

He wonders if his dad would have known what it was.

There’s only one corner he can’t see into. There aren’t any holes there, no filtered light, and the angle is off from the door.

It’s pitch black there, black as night, and it gives Ben the impression that the darkness has begun to ooze outward from that corner.

He thinks about the headless boy in the library, and the clown, and he can see them both in the corner, in his mind’s eye.

He shudders.

Beverly is closer to the corner now. “I wish we’d brought flashlights.”

“Yeah.” Ben swallows.

She reaches out, uses the wall to guide her, and then there’s a wet sound.

Bev steps back, then reaches out with her foot. “There’s something here.”

“Water?” Ben asks. Although it hadn’t rained recently. And they weren’t exactly close to the river. The river, if he’s right, is much closer to where Bill and Mike were heading, but he knows if he and Bev had kept at it they would have hit it eventually.

“Maybe?” Bev reaches out and pokes the ground with one finger.

“Beverly?”

“Eew. It’s thick like –” She starts.

“Oil?” Ben asks.

She’s quiet for a moment, then she stands quickly and wipes her finger on her dress. “We should go.”

Ben opens his mouth to ask why, almost wants to ask what he’s done, but then there’s a scrape, and then a creak.

“The door!” Bev says.

And Ben turns just in time to see it slam shut.

It’s pitch black now. Someone has covered all the holes in the roof. Unbidden, Ben’s mind calls up the image of some large thing draping itself over the bunker. He imagines it looking in through one of the holes.

No. No, no, no.

“Beverly?” he calls out into the dark. He reaches out for her.

She was a ways off from him but if he just keeps moving this way…

There’s no answer.


	6. Bill Denbrough and the Dead

Bill’s foot slips on the floor, and he realizes that it’s wet. There’s water rapidly pooling in from somewhere he can’t see. Mike stops him from falling face first onto the ground, and he leans on Mike to stay upright.

“W-where do we go?” Bill asks.

The building is half made, as though it’s trying to rebuild itself around them but can’t quite get the pieces right.

“There!” Mike points over to what looks like a smokestack. The walls around it are still open and wilted and Bill can actually see outside.

The sound of their footsteps is jarringly loud in the water, and Bill knows that something is following them. He really can’t bring himself to look back. If he looks back and sees it – _really_ _sees_ it, that will make it real. And then he won’t be able to stop it.

It’s getting harder to walk, and when he runs up against something he finally looks back down.

There are bodies on the floor. Floating in the now almost knee-deep water, and when he tries to step around them he walks right into it and it lolls against his leg, rolling over and – oh.

It’s bone and ruined flesh, the face gouged and cracked beyond recognition to expose meat and bone. He tries not to think that that might be all that’s left of Georgie after a year, but once the thought enters his mind he can’t push it back.

Not Georgie, please, not him. He doesn’t deserve that. He can’t be dead, he’s just hiding out, somewhere waiting for Bill to find him. The idea had taken root in his head when he’d watched _Aliens_. If Newt could live that long by herself then so can Georgie.

He feels panic and guilt and despair rising in his chest, the feelings smushed together to create a terror that pushes on his heart and makes it hard to breathe.

“Bill!” Mike’s voice cuts through the fog and pulls him abruptly back to himself. He realizes he’s still stopped, and behind them he can hear the loud splash of something advancing.

“Snap out of it, come on, I can’t carry you,” Mike is saying. He gets his arms around Bill and makes like he’s going to try and carry him anyway.

Bill tries to speak but all that comes out is a ragged breath. He grabs Mike’s hand and squeezes, trying to communicate that he’s really sorry he got them into this mess, but he’s not sure the message comes across. He steps around the body in front of him and lets Mike pull him toward the smokestack.

He looks back before he can stop himself, because now he needs to know what is following them, how close it is because of him.

It makes him think of a skeleton, all bone-thin and jointed limbs, and it’s blackened and ruined as though fresh from a fire, or maybe it’s built out of black iron. He doesn’t know.

Something Mike said a few days earlier flashes through his mind._ Maybe it knows what scares us most and that’s what we see._

He doesn’t know if this is coming from him or from Mike or if together they’ve created some terrible hybrid composed of all the things they never want to see, or even if that thing has always been here, just waiting to be found so it can finally have something to eat. It looks like it’s been waiting for so long.

It crawls like a broken doll, low to the ground on legs that have too many joints to move smoothly. It seems designed less for speed and more for the idea of paralyzing prey with fear. If Bill were alone he thinks he might be paralyzed again.

But he isn’t alone, and he’ll be damned if he gets Mike killed by that thing.

He speeds up, pulling Mike along behind him. “D-d-don’t l-l-look at it,” he manages to say.

They have to step through bodies and water that feels thick and warm against their legs. The walls that had so quickly built up around them seem to melt. It’s getting hotter in here. So damn hot.

It’s only when they are within laughing distance of the smokestack that Bill realizes it.

They weren’t so much running there as being herded there.

There’s a large open hole in the ground, blocking the path to the smokestack and freedom. He looks down cautiously, and sees man-sized pipes and a floor below. The river is nearby, he remembers, and the sewers must run right beneath the factory.

The floor has to have caved in in the explosion, and now, unless they want to turn around and face that giant spider-doll, they’ve got nowhere to go.

“We can hide in the sewers!” Mike says. “No way that thing will fit down there.”

Bill doesn’t know why he thinks that’s a horrible idea. “N-no.”

“Where else are we gonna go, Bill?” Mike asks. He looks back over their shoulders and his eyes go wide.

There really is nowhere else.

“I-I-I’m sorry,” Bill says.

There’s a ledge jutting out to their right. And one below that. And one below that.

It looks entirely too much like stairs for Bill’s liking. He tugs Mike after him and makes for the stairs, hoping for the best.


	7. Eddie Kaspbrak and the Rot

Eddie can’t breathe.

This is not necessarily something new for him, but it’s definitely never happened in a gross old house like this.

“Just relax,” Stan says. He sounds so calm, and he’s made Eddie sit upright, and is rubbing small circles on his upper back in a way that actually is sort of comforting.

Eddie still feels like an over-inflated balloon. He can’t breathe at all and his chest is tight and he’s shaking and he wishes Richie were back with his inhaler. And then Richie would make a stupid gross joke and Eddie would be fine.

“Breathe in and out, nice and slow,” Stan says, like Eddie hasn’t been trying to do that for the last 6 years. 6 minutes. Who even knows.

From down here on the floor, Eddie can’t even see that stupid spider thing. It makes it easier to tell himself that there wasn’t anything there at all.

He takes a breath.

“Yeah, just like that,” Stan says. “See? We don’t even need Richie.”

Eddie laughs, or tries to, but it comes out on another wheeze.

It seems to take forever, but he works back from the edge. He thinks maybe Stan is better than an inhaler, because Stan is warm and bright and much better conversation, and also doesn’t need regular refills.

“Okay,” Eddie finally says. “I’m okay.”

“Good job,” Stan says, like Eddie has actually done something other than not die. “Now let’s go get Richie and then we’re getting out of here.”

Eddie nods enthusiastically at that idea.

Stan pulls him up to his feet, steadying him for just a second. The floor creaks under their combined weight, and it feels a bit like it’s sagging.

Stan steps away from him and towards the door, which is nearly shut now.

Weird.

It must have drifted a bit. Or maybe Richie bumped it on the way out.

Stan reaches out to pull it open, and it slams shuts with a bang that rattles the room.

For the first time, Eddie notices the patterns on the wallpaper in this room are less faded. It looks a bit like there are eyes all over the walls. Crooked eyes and a crooked smile.

Stan rattles and pulls on the doorknob but the door doesn’t budge. He hopes to god this is just Richie playing a stupid prank on them. If it is, he’s gonna kill him, but if it isn’t… Eddie doesn’t want to think about all the things it could be.

That clown again.

The leper.

Henry Bowers. Or Patrick.

Eddie takes a step forward.

The floor creaks and then cracks, wood splintering like someone has hit it with a sledgehammer instead of the force of a 13-year old boy’s foot. It gives way entirely and suddenly Eddie is falling.

He barely has time to scream, and he hears Stan yell from what seems like far away now, but then he collides with the floor of the living room, and that gives way too.

He catches himself on sharp wooden edges, or maybe the edges catch on him because it really hurts, and he thinks maybe he should be dead because he’s halfway through the floor and he should be halfway through the ground, or maybe he should be a pancake, but apparently there’s a basement because his legs are hanging somewhere.

He tries to wiggle out a bit but he can’t get enough leverage. He’s too far into the floor.

“Oh my god, Eddie?”

He looks up, thinking maybe Stan will be looking down through the ceiling at him, but there’s nothing through that hole but pitch blackness.

Where’s Stan?

But then that voice must be Richie, and it is. Richie who was on the stairs with Eddie’s inhaler in hand.

“Eddie!” He runs down the steps.

“Richie!” Is all Eddie can think to say. But then he thinks about how soft the floor is, and how close Richie is and, “No! The whole floor’s gonna break! I told you this house was a death trap!” It comes out higher pitched than he intends, but there’s pressure on his chest and this time it’s from the floor pressing around him.

“Fuck that,” Richie says. He shoves Eddie’s inhaler into his pocket and steps closer. He reaches out for Eddie and Eddie grabs hold of his hands.

Richie pulls.

There’s a sharp pain digging into Eddie’s ribs. “Ow! Ow, stop!”

Richie stops pulling but doesn’t let go. “Why?”

“It’s –” he looks down at where his chest disappears into the floor. All the wood is bent at sharp downward angles, pressed tight against him. “I’m stuck.”

Richie lets go of his hands and gets down on his knees, trying to wedge his fingers in between the floor and Eddie’s chest. There’s barely room and Eddie feels like he can’t breathe again.

“I’ll pull you out,” Richie says. He grabs under Eddie’s armpits and tugs, but it doesn’t do much.

Eddie ducks his head under Richie’s chin and wants to cry. “I’m really stuck.” He kicks his feet under the floor and they swing through empty air. He has the sudden thought that something might grab his legs.

“Oh fuck,” Richie says. “Fuck fuck fuck. Where the hell is Stan?”

“He’s upstairs – the door was stuck and we couldn’t get out,” Eddie says around the lump in his throat. It’s really starting to hurt and he’s pretty sure he’s started to cry a bit.

“So you fell through the floor?” Richie looks up through the hole in the ceiling.

“I didn’t do it on purpose asshole!” Eddie says. He wishes there was something for him brace on underneath. He can’t hold himself for much longer. “I think – I think there’s a basement.”

Richie looks down and then pulls back enough to look Eddie in the face. He looks determined, possibly more determined than Eddie’s ever seen him, barring the time he tried to show Eddie how to play video games, and that makes his heart swell a bit. “Okay. If I can’t pull you out, then we can pull you through!”

It’s not like Eddie wants to be stuck in a floor forever, but still. He doesn’t like the idea of the blank darkness where his legs are hanging.

What if there’s something down there?

And where the hell is Stan? What if something happened to him?

“I’ll find the basement, and we’ll get you out!” Richie says. “Don’t move!”

“Richie!” Eddie says. He wants to say, _don’t leave me alone_, but he can’t.

Richie stands up, and for the second time he leaves Eddie, disappearing into the kitchen.

“Richie!” Eddie yells after him. He swings his legs, but it makes his grip on floor slip a bit and he worries about falling alone into the darkness.

There’s silence.

“Stan!” He yells.

There’s a series of bangs from above him, but he doesn’t hear Stan’s voice.

He looks around the living room. It’s dim, and there’s dust heavy in the air, probably stirred up from his fall.

He has the thought that if there were more of those giant spiders, he would be almost defenseless. They would swarm him and eat him and he wouldn’t be able to run away.

He doesn’t want to be alone.

There’s a shuffling noise.

Eddie’s head snaps up and he looks around more slowly, trying to find where it came from.

There’s silence upstairs now.

“Stan?” He calls out.

Nothing.

Then, a shuffle and a scrape.

The pile of curtains beneath the window shifts and a hand reaches out.

Something grabs Eddie’s legs. He kicks out and it grabs on again.

“Eddie it’s just me!” Richie’s voice from below.

“Ohmygod,” Eddie doesn’t think he’s ever been so relieved.

Another hand slides out and the whole pile moves, like something is trying to unwrap itself from within. It’s a pale hand, wrinkled like it’s been underwater for far too long, and there’s an open sore oozing along the knuckles.

“I’m going to pull you down, okay?” Richie yells, and he grabs Eddie’s ankles, which really isn’t very helpful, and tugs.

Eddie moves down a bit, but catches at his armpits.

Great. Now he can barely move at all.

“I can’t!” He says.

A pale skull-like head peeks out, eyes orange and sunken. It has stringy reddish hair and a bloody hole in the space where its nose should be. Eddie can’t help the small scream that comes out.

“I’m sorry!” Richie says. “I’m not trying to hurt you!”

“You’re not! Get me out!” Eddie says, or screams more likely. Because plummeting into a dark basement suddenly seems a hell of a lot better than being at eye-level with that thing.

It drags itself out a bit, and Eddie sees that it ends at the torso, spine hanging out where the flesh ends.

“I’m trying! Put your arms up and I’ll pull again!” Richie is holding his ankle like it’s holding his hand.

That would put Eddie entirely at the mercy of that thing for the few seconds it would take to go down.

“But –” What if it isn’t fast enough? What if Richie isn’t there in the basement and it’s just that thing everywhere he goes? What if he hits the ground and somehow keeps on falling?

“I’ll catch you, okay?” Richie says. “Just trust me.”

Eddie does trust him. “Okay.”

The thing drags itself closer, a trail of blood and something clear oozing out behind it. It’s upper lip is missing, exposing yellowed pointed teeth. A fingernail snaps off when it grabs at the floor to drag itself closer. It’s getting so close now.

Eddie lifts his arms up and squeezes his eyes shut.

For the second time that day he’s falling.

He feels something wet scrape at his hand but he refuses to look. He lets himself fall, and this time someone catches him.

It’s awkward, the angle is all wrong, and it has to hurt Richie to take his body weight all at once like this, but he catches Eddie around the waist, face pressed into Eddie’s back as he stumbles back until he collides them with a wall. Eddie slides down to land on his own two feet.

“Told you I’d catch you,” Richie wheezes. His arms are still wrapped around Eddie’s chest.

Eddie has the overwhelming urge to turn around and hug Richie, but instead he just wraps his arms over Richie’s arms and leans into him.

The basement is dark and musty, and honestly, Eddie has no idea how Richie was brave enough to come down here alone. He’s extremely impressed, not to mention grateful and if he ever figures out how he’ll find a way to thank him properly.

There’s light coming in from the upper level where Eddie was hanging from, and he doesn’t want to look there; he’s sure he’ll see that thing looking down for him, or maybe crawling through, but he makes himself look. He’s safe, he tells himself. He’s safe. And when he looks, nothing is there.

There’s light spilling from above a staircase on the far side, and it lights up the basement enough. It’s just a root cellar. It’s fine. It’s really fine. They’re –

Stan.

“Oh no,” Eddie says. He pulls away from Richie, but hangs on to one of his hands.

“What?” Richie asks. He sounds a little dazed.

“Stan.”

Richie’s eyes go wide behind his glasses, and then he’s pulling Eddie out towards the stairs.


	8. Beverly Marsh and the Dark

Beverly can’t see.

There’s a darkness thicker than water around her and it feels like if she opens her mouth it will pour in and drown her.

Ben has to be close though, if she can find him then – well. She doesn’t really know what good that will do actually. She’ll still be in the dark. Worse, she’ll probably just hold him back, like Daddy always says.

Still, she doesn’t want to be alone, not really. Not in this place.

She reaches out cautiously, hoping to find something, anything to ground her. It feels like she’s floating in the dark, like if she can’t grab something she’ll float away and suffocate in the blackness.

_We all float down here_, she thinks, _isn’t that what they said?_

She feels something, and grabs onto it. A hand. She tries to pull it close, grateful for the fact that she is no longer alone, she wants to pull Ben into–

Then she notices how it feels.

Wet and warm, slippery with the same thing she’d found on the ground. What she tried to tell herself really was oil and not blood. She tries to slide her hand out, but the grip tightens – won’t let her go. It reminds her of her father when he’s been drinking. When he pulls her over and won’t let her slip away until he’s satisfied himself that she’s still his little girl.

She feels bile rise in her throat and pulls harder, finally wrenching her hand from that grip. She stumbles away and falls against the wall then recoils from it. The wall is wet and sticky, pulsing with warmth. It moves under her touch like she’s startled it. It’s like… she wracks her brain. It’s like the inside of a mouth, or a stomach. As soon as she thinks it, the ground beneath her moves like it can push her along inside.

She can hear movement, a slick wet pop and slip, something slithering through the wetness again and again in a rhythm that makes her heart pound and her head spin and her stomach heave.

She feels panic rise in her chest and tries to take a gasping breath. The air is close and damp and she doesn’t think she’s ever felt so alone, even though she knows she isn’t alone, not really. And she wants to be left alone, but not like this.

She wraps her arms around herself, feeling exposed in her dress in the darkness.

She can’t have it both ways, can she?

She wants to call out.

Is this really happening? What will the others say when she never comes back? Will they come looking for her? Will they find what’s left of her? Or maybe they’ll be swallowed right alongside her?

And where is Ben? What happened to him?

If she stays quiet, Ben will never find her. She’ll be alone until she suffocates in the dark or worse.

But if she yells then the thing will find her, whatever it is in there between her and Ben; or maybe she’ll startle whatever has swallowed her whole and it’ll know she’s there and –

What if its already gotten to Ben? What if he’s lying only feet away from her, dead and rotting alone because she wasn’t strong enough to reach out and help him?

One of the few people who actually treats her like a human being, who actually cares about her, and she let him down?

She hates that thought more than she hates the thought of some creature wrapping slippery arms around her. It can’t be worse than Daddy.

She steels herself. “Ben!”

“Beverly!” The relief in his voice is palpable.

He sounds close, but she can’t see a goddamn thing and she’s starting to get really annoyed.

“Where are you?” Ben asks.

“I’m right here.” Beverly reaches out, draws her hand back for just a second, anticipating wet meat sliding beneath her fingers. Then she reaches out again.

Let it try.

She’ll be damned if she’s going to let that get between her and her friend again.

She reaches out and this time she comes into contact with fabric – a shoulder, an arm.

“Ben!” she pulls herself over to him and wraps her arms around him.

It’s still pitch black, but she doesn’t need to see anymore.


	9. Mike Hanlon and the Stairway to Hell

Mike knows he should have realized something was wrong when the moment they reached the bottom of the stairs the thing behind them was gone.

It had been _right there_, so close and now it was gone like it had never been there.

Bill drops down from the last step and the splash echoes around the chamber.

There are open tunnels on each side and each one is large enough to walk through. Who designed a sewer system like this anyways, did they need room for a tractor or something?

“W-w-w” Bill stutters. He stops, clearly frustrated with himself.

“You got it, man,” Mike tries his best to sound encouraging.

“W-where did it go?” Bill asks. He’s looking up towards the remains of the factory, where it’s clear, and the sky shines in through gaps in the ceiling.

Not so scary now.

“I dunno. You wanna go back up?” Mike asks. He’s really hoping the answer will be no.

“N-no. Let’s just… get out this way.” Bill looks around them as though he knows where to go.

It’s darker down here. The light doesn’t reach down much past the second step, and each open tunnel is a black cavern.

“Okay.” Honestly, maybe they’d have better luck going back up.

“Which way is your place?” Bill asks.

Mike looks around and then up. He’s never been inside the Iron Works before, but he knows the smokestack was more or less parallel from his house. Maybe a little far to the right... And kind of on the opposite side? If they just head that way…

Would that be… he looks at the tunnel directly ahead of them. The angle doesn’t seem quite right somehow, and something about it feels wrong.

He points to the tunnel on the right. “I think.”

“Guess we’ll have to f-f-find out,” Bill says.

“Wish we had a flashlight,” Mike says.

“Y-yeah,” Bill says.

Mike glances around at the open tunnels. He feels like they’re surrounded. Like there are things on every side and he just can’t see them. He really doesn’t like it, and he doesn’t like the idea that he’s going to have to turn his back on that darkness.

“L-let’s go.” Bill hesitates and then reaches for Mike’s hand, awkwardly, like he expects Mike to swat him away.

Mike grabs his hand. “My grandfather is gonna be so mad that I smell like a sewer.”

“S-sorry,” Bill says.

“Don’t be, you smell like it too.”

That makes Bill smile a little, a very small light in the growing darkness.

They start out down the tunnel to the right, and there’s a knot in Mike’s stomach that loosens slightly. He feels like he’s picked the right way, and becomes more certain of it with each step. He keeps looking over their shoulders though, and in the same way he knows they’ve picked the right way to go, he knows they’re being followed.

The tunnel is dry except for a small stream of water rushing past them back towards the Iron Works. Mike knows this means they are either heading uphill or there’s a water source somewhere nearby. He hopes to god it means there’s a way out soon.

“It’s really dark,” Bill says quietly.

“Yeah,” Mike says.

And it is. It’s not pitch black, but it’s dim and hard to make out detail in the lighting. He can barely see where he’s going, and he keeps kicking rocks with each step, but at least he hasn’t tripped, even if his shoes are completely soaked through.

There’s a hiss from somewhere behind them. Or ahead of them. It’s hard to tell with the way the tunnels echo.

They freeze, and Mike looks at Bill in the dark.

What if that thing had climbed down behind them after all? What if its tracking them? Or what if it lives down here and they’re about to wander straight into its lair?

He doesn’t know what it is, exactly, doesn’t want to spend time thinking about it right now, but he wonders if it’s that thing crawling after them. Or maybe that clown, or maybe they really are the same thing after all.

He squeezes Bill’s hand to reassure himself he’s not alone. Bill would never let something happen to him. And he can’t let anything happen to Bill.

“Did you hear that?” Bill whispers.

Mike thinks about his answer for a minute. “There’s nothing there.”

He reaches out to steady himself against the wall with his free hand when he almost trips over something he can’t quite see.

There’s a growing light, and Mike doesn’t know exactly where it’s coming from; behind them or maybe from ahead of them, but it lets him see just a bit more, and he’s grateful for that. Unless it turns out to be the glowing eyes of some creature waiting to eat them. Then he just hopes that there’s enough light for them to see it coming.

Bill’s breathing is shaky. “Y—yeah. There’s nothing there,” Bill repeats, a little unsteady.

There’s a harsh gurgling sound, like water down a drain or something choking on itself that echoes around them, but it’s loud enough to hurt Mike’s ears. Bill holds tight to Mike’s hand, and it makes Mike remember that he isn’t alone. He never has to be alone again.

Mike takes a deep breath. _Please don’t let it be too far_.

He can get them out.

Mike has never really had friends before. His cousins almost never visit, and none of the men working with his grandfather have kids his age. They’re all either much younger, or too old to play with Mike. But he likes what he has right now.

He’s always felt like an outsider. That’s what happens when your parents die and no one knows how to talk to you anymore. That’s what happens when you live outside of town. And that’s what happens when your grandfather decides to homeschool you and you don’t get to see other kids your age.

Well, that’s not entirely true. Mike has seen them all around town.

He first saw Bill when they were 8. Georgie was on his back, excited and loud, clinging to his big brother’s neck on their way out of the store. Bill had looked apologetic at the time, even as his little brother yelled in his ear, but Mike had thought it was adorable. It made him wish he had a brother too.

He’s seen Beverly around town plenty of times; sometimes alone, and when she’s alone she looks so proud; but he’s seen her in the store with her father too, her head down and so silent she could be mistaken for another girl entirely.

He’s seen Stan going in and out of the synagogue since he was old enough to remember, said hi a few times, once told him to take the long way home to avoid Henry Bowers.

He’s seen Eddie around Keene’s pharmacy a dozen times, sometimes with his mother, being dragged in or out and looking so small and frail. Once he found him alone and in tears on the sidewalk outside. Mike had given him the sucker he’d been saving for himself just to see the kid stop crying.

He’s seen Richie most by the theatre, once saw him after some stupid werewolf movie they’d both gone to and said hi, but not much else. Richie seemed upset about something, and Mike hadn’t known how to ask if he was okay.

He only met Ben recently, but he knows another outsider when he sees one. Ben looks at him like they’re the same and Mike kind of appreciates that.

He likes that he’s on the inside now. That he’s part of a group. _The Loser’s Club_, Richie had said. _Lucky Seven_, Ben had said. He has people to lean on, and he has people he can be there for now. He likes seeing them every day he can.

He doesn’t think he’s ever had a better summer so far, and he’ll be damned if he dies in a sewer pipe with one of the few people crazy enough to call him a friend.

He has to be brave, if not for himself, then for his friends.

The tunnel lightens up ahead, and the water flow at their feet grows stronger. There’s something splashing in the water behind them.

No.

There’s nothing there.

If he believes it hard enough, maybe he can keep them both safe.

Bill is breathing hard beside him. “M-mike, I’m so-s-sorry. I never should have made us go in.”

“You were right, though.” Mike says. “There was nothing to be scared of.”

He ignores the way the burnt flesh and bone-thin limbs flash to mind. _Don’t think about that, we’re so close now._

Bill actually laughs.

The tunnel ahead of them bends, and when they turn the corner there’s daylight, and summer heat and the shallows of the river. He didn’t realize how cold he’d been in the tunnel until the warm air hits his skin.

“We made it,” Bill says, and he sounds like he doesn’t really believe it.

“Yeah we did,” Mike says. They slosh out on to the riverbank, and Mike is glad they didn’t come out further down, where the water is deep and the pipes drop right into it. Beside them there’s a path up.

Mike steps up and turns to pull Bill up by their joined hands. Behind Bill, just leaning around the bend leading deeper into the sewer, are a pair of glowing orange eyes.

Oh.

A shudder runs through him.

He knew it. It was that clown again, the one he’d seen from the back of the meat shop, impossibly dangling from a hook.

There’s something… angry about it, and Mike doesn’t think he’s ever felt so much hatred in one look. He has the brief thought that acknowledging it will make it lunge out for them, but it doesn’t.

Instead it slinks back into the darkness.

And Mike pulls Bill into a hug as soon as they hit the top of the hill.

They’re going to have to take the long way back around the Iron Works, they’ve come out completely on the wrong side, but they made it. And that’s all that matters.


	10. Stanley Uris and the Art of Fear

Stan bangs on the door again, and it still won’t open.

He’d tried to make a grab for Eddie when he fell, but he’d missed and now there’s a hole in the floor that creaks when he gets too close. Stan doesn’t want to fall too, so he’s kept close to the walls, even though he knows they’re watching him.

He can’t hear Eddie at all.

What if he’s dead? What if he’s lying there with his neck all broken? What if Richie blames Stan and just leaves him there all alone? What if the reason Richie isn’t back yet is because he’s dead too and it’s just Stan alone in this house where no one will ever look for him?

He feels tears prick hot in the corners of his eyes. He hates this.

He wishes he was at home. Or maybe that they were all in Ben’s living room throwing food at each other.

The door won’t budge no matter how hard he bangs on it. He’s stuck.

There’s a rustling from behind him.

“No,” he says out loud, and his voice cracks. “No, no, no.”

He already knows what’s there.

Not the giant spider.

Not the eyes in the wallpaper.

Not the clown his friends say they’ve seen.

_Her_.

It’s her again, he knows it.

She always follows him, no matter where he goes.

He shuts his eyes tight and feels the tears escape. He tries the handle again. Nothing.

What other options does he have? Jump out the old window and plummet two stories outside? Jump down the hole in the middle of the room and land on top of his friend’s corpse?

It doesn’t matter anyways, both options involve him having to turn around and face her. She’ll be blocking the pathway and he knows it.

_She isn’t real_, he tells himself.

That’s what he told the others about what they saw. So he has to believe it too.

_She’s not real, none of it is. It isn’t empirically possible. _

Like science actually applies to the way fear coils tightly in his stomach.

Maybe if he just… doesn’t look at her, then she isn’t really there. Maybe he can get around her by sticking to the walls.

But that’s never worked before. He always looks, and she’s always there.

Doesn’t he owe it to himself to try though?

Doesn’t he owe it to Richie and Eddie, who might still be alive down there? And they wouldn’t leave without him, he knows this logically.

He knows they love him, but the part of him that’s afraid hisses that they’ll just save themselves, that he’ll have to get himself out.

He turns, eyes still shut tight, and breathes to steady himself. He does the only thing he can think of. He starts listing all the birds he can think of.

“Longneck Finch. Speckled Grouse.” He swallows hard.

“Baltimore Oriole. Gray Egret.” There’s silence. Maybe she’s gone. Maybe she was never there. Maybe he can do this.

Somewhere below, someone yells his name.

He opens his eyes.

She leans in, all skewed face and blank eyes, grinn stretched wide.

He wants to scream.

Her hands ghost up his shoulders and he shoves at her. It doesn’t do much.

He’s shaking and he doesn’t want to look but if he looks away then he won’t see her coming again and that’s worse.

Someone calls his name again.

Half of him wants who ever that is to hurry the hell up and get him out, and the other half of him wants them to stay away, because he can’t fight her off and he doesn’t want his friends to get hurt.

She grabs tight onto his shoulders, and opens her mouth wide, wide, wide.

He thinks she might be aiming to swallow him whole, like a snake, and he tries to squirm away from her, to pull out of her grasp, but he _can’t._

And then there’s light.

Bright and hot and weightless.

He shuts his eyes against it, but it burns hot and insistent against his eyelids.

He can’t look, he knows it, doesn’t know how but he knows it in his bones. If he looks he won’t ever come back.

But that light.

Just for a second, before he could shut his eyes, he saw it. He looked right into it and he wanted to be there.

He can feel it hot on his face, and fingers dig into his arms until it hurts.

Something bangs on the door against his back.

“Stan!” Richie.

“Stanley!” Eddie.

They’re both alive and they didn’t leave him.

He wants to open his eyes, but knows he can’t yet. He has a horrible vision of the woman snapping her jaws down and taking off his head.

The door bangs so hard it opens for a second.

“Stan! Get off the door!” Richie yells. “What the fuck are you doing in there?”

They can’t come in and see this. They’re all dead if they look into that light. And it’s one thing to let himself down, but he can’t let them down, not like this.

Stan pushes back against the woman. He starts yelling all the birds he can think of at her again, and feels her step back, then again.

“Hammerhead Woodpecker! Brown Thrush!”

The light retreats against his eyelids.

He turns around and only then does he open his eyes. He pulls on the door at the same time Richie pushes, and the door opens with a snapping sound. He barely has time to say anything before there are arms on him and Eddie is pulling him out. The door slams shut behind him.

“What the fuck was that?” Eddie is shrill in Stan’s ear.

“What was what?” Richie yells to match Eddie.

Stan opens his mouth and chokes.

Eddie is still hanging off of him, dirty and afraid, and Stan pulls him in closer, reaching out for Richie. His legs are shaking and he thinks he’s going to fall over. Richie lets himself be pulled in for an awkward hug.

“You okay, man?” Richie asks.

“No,” Stan says. “I want to get the fuck out of here.”

They hug him a little tighter.

Behind them, there’s nothing. No noise from the old nursery.

“Then let’s go,” Richie says after a minute.

He keeps hold of their hands, and lets Richie lead him out. He feels a little safer between them, but he looks back over his shoulder a few times, just in case.

Outside, the sun is warm and bright. When he closes his eyes against it it feels like deadlights. And he thinks just for a second, he wanted to be there.


	11. Ben Hanscom and the End of the Darkness

Ben hugs Beverly close.

She’s safe. She’s alright.

For a moment, he doesn’t care about anything else. If she’s okay, then so is he.

The darkness loosens around them a bit and the voice he’d heard echoing around inside his head fades. He’s not alone, he’s not going to die alone.

He has friends that love him and that he would do anything for.

“We have to get out of here,” Beverly says, muffled into his hair.

“How?” Ben asks, because it feels like they’re swimming in a void.

And somewhere nearby he knows is the thing with the skeletal hands. The one that called to him with a voice that reverberated around inside his brain and knew his every wish and every worry. The one that said he could be with his father if he just followed it. He could see it with his mind’s eye. A bone man wearing long flaps of skin like a coat, made up of all the bits of his father they could never find.

His father is buried six feet deep. Or supposed to be.

Instead, his body scattered among fields far away and all Ben and his mother had left was an empty box to put their memories in, and then they buried it deep and tried to forget.

Ben doesn’t want to be with his father.

And it doesn’t matter if Beverly doesn’t like him back, as long as she’s alive and as long as she’s happy. It doesn’t matter if Richie makes fun of him, because Richie makes fun of everyone. It doesn’t matter if he doesn’t get Bill and Eddie’s in-jokes, they’ll explain it if he asks.

“Just… keep moving,” Bev says. She pulls back from him enough that they can walk, but stays close.

As plans go it’s not great, but it’s better than nothing.

Ben’s foot sinks into the ground, and he struggles to pull it out. It’s wet and seems to suck his foot back in when he tries.

He takes another step and his other foot sinks in. “Beverly, I’m stuck!”

She pulls at him and barely manages to budge him.

Ben tries again, pulls as hard as he can and thinks about how he’ll insist they all stay inside next time.

They can have ice cream.

They can watch a movie or three.

There will be popcorn, and Bill can pick the movies because he has the weirdest taste, and Mike can bring cards for them to fool around with during the movies, and Stan can take up the whole armchair if he wants, and Eddie can sit on Richie’s lap again, and maybe this time Beverly will hide her face on Ben’s shoulder if she gets scared.

He thinks hard about that. And about his mother’s face when she sees he’s got friends over, the way she relaxes and smiles and makes embarrassingly large dinners.

He thinks about that and pulls his foot free. And then his other foot. He nearly knocks Bev over with the force of it.

But slowly they keep moving.

Light filters in around the corners and Ben imagines the thing draped over the bunker sliding off, scuttling away into the dark, wounded somehow and angry, but gone nonetheless.

He can actually see where they’re going. Straight into a wall. They’ve missed the door by a lot. It’s on the far wall to their right, but they can see it now, and they all but run to it.

Bev shoves at it, and when it barely budges Ben throws himself against it too and then it scrapes open with a sound like a squeal and they tumble out, face first, onto the ground.

The summer air is a relief. Warm and dry and bright.

“I think I’m done exploring today,” Ben says, and it sounds breathless.

“Yeah,” Bev agrees.

He stands up and offers her a hand. She takes it, and her smile is as radiant as the sun.

“Let’s get back before the others come looking for us,” Bev says.

Ben pauses. “Do you think…” He wants to ask her about what just happened. He wants to ask if they should tell the others, or if maybe they should ask if something like this happened to the others, but he doesn’t know how to word it.

“I don’t know,” she says, like she’s scooped the thoughts from the top of his brain. “I don’t know what that was, exactly. But I saw it too. We can… maybe we can keep it between us for now. Until we figure out what it was?”

Ben kind of likes the idea of having something just between the two of them, although he wishes it were something better. “Yeah. Okay.”

They hold hands all the way to Mike’s house, and Ben only looks back once.


	12. Eddie Kaspbrak and the Long Day

Eddie doesn’t say anything about what he saw, either when he was alone or the thing he saw reaching for Stan. That one isn’t his to talk about, anyway, he thinks.

They’re quiet on the way back to Mike’s. Or at least, he is, and Stan is, and so Richie fills in the gaps a bit by going on about how they probably had a way more interesting day than anyone else, and how there were probably pickled heads and toes and dicks in the basement and they’re lucky they left before the old witch who lives there came home.

Ben and Beverly are there when they get back, sitting on the blanket they’d left laid on the grass. One of Beverly’s hands is stained with something that she is idly trying to wipe off, and both of them look exhausted. Ben still hops up when he sees them and is reaching out to Eddie before he can sit down.

For a moment Eddie is confused, and then he looks down to where Ben is reaching and – oh. His shirt is marked up and torn in a few areas, no doubt from the floor pushing into him, and he’ll probably have some serious bruises for a while. There are probably a few cuts too, and he hopes Mike comes back soon so he can borrow some bandages and disinfectant. He’s probably going to have to go to the doctor and… well, that can wait.

He takes a good look at Richie and Stan. Richie, filthy with dust and a spiderweb in his hair, looks more or less as tired as Eddie feels, but there’s something less weighted about it. Eddie doesn’t think Richie saw anything at all, and it makes him wonder if he really saw anything. Maybe he imagined it. Maybe he’s sick in the head.

He thinks about the pale, wrinkled skin and oozing sores, the sound the spine made as it dragged across the floor. He doesn’t think he’s crazy… but there’s no way that thing could have been there. After all, it wasn’t there when he went back through the living room with Richie.

Stan is covered in dust and there are blackened smudges shaped like fingerprints on his shoulders and his eyes are glassy. He doesn’t let go of their hands until they sit down on the blanket. Eddie wants to say something but it looks like Stan’s retreated into himself for a while.

It’s almost ten minutes before Bill and Mike come up from the road, as though they’d decided to just run off to town instead. But they’re both wet to the knees, and there’s soot smeared on their faces and hands. They smell terrible.

Bill flops on the blanket next to Stan, clearly exhausted, and after a moment, puts an arm around the other boy. Mike goes inside with Richie and Bev to get towels, bandages, and food.

The sun is still hot above them, but it’s lower in the sky now, and the shadows it casts are long and full.

Eddie’s watch goes off. It’s 3 pm, and he’s so tired.

Bill looks over and then snorts. “Told you to be back for 3.”

Eddie swallows his pills and sticks his tongue out at Bill. He wonders if they can salvage the day or if they should just let it go. The mood has dropped and no one wants to draw the map they were supposed to be plotting out. All Eddie can say is, don’t head West past the old, fat tree stump with the empty wasp’s nest.

Something rustles behind him. “I know what the Eddie-bear wants,” a voice hisses in his ear.

Eddie jumps a foot in the air before he hears Richie laughing.

“Richie!” Eddie splutters. “I almost had a heart attack! You can’t sneak up on people like that, you could kill someone!”

Richie laughs harder. “Aw come on, it’s not like I can scare you to death. Besides, I brought you something.” He tosses a twinkie into Eddie’s lap.

Eddie flushes. He was kind of hungry.

Besides, Bill and Stan look amused, and it’s nice to see Stan look a little less haunted.

Still, Eddie wants to be difficult. “I don’t need a snack, Rich, I need bandages. And disinfectant and –”

“Relax, I got you those too.” Richie sits down next to him and sets down a first aid kit.

Eddie’s heart fills a little bit.


	13. Stanley Uris and the Lights

At some point Stan had stopped thinking about bright lights.

For a while he thought about nothing at all, let his head empty out to numbness and let his friends pull him all the way back to Mike’s house.

There’s a heavy feeling settling in the air, and he doesn’t like it. Doesn’t want to check back in and find everything different from how he needs it to be.

He doesn’t really check back in until he hears Richie laughing and sees Eddie’s frustrated face. There are snacks, Bill has an arm around him, and Mike very gently reaches out to brush away dirt with a wet washcloth.

After a moment Stan takes it from him so he can scrub his face hard and wipe away dried tears and dirt and the impression of teeth and weightlessness.

“You okay?” Mike asks.

“Yeah,” and it’s only half a lie.

“Stan was trapped in this old ugly nursery. I think he saw the ghost of a demon baby,” Richie says. His tone is light, but he’s very carefully holding a bottle of rubbing alcohol in one hand and bandages in the other so that Eddie can dab at his own chest with both hands.

“There’s no such thing as ghosts, Richie,” Stan says. Lets himself fall back on routine.

“What about you, Eddie?” Ben asks.

Eddie has the hem of his shirt stuck in his mouth so he can see what he’s doing and he doesn’t answer.

“He fell through the floor,” Richie says. “Guess he really is his mother’s son –”

Eddie kicks Richie.

“What about you?” Stan asks Bill.

“We… g-got lost in the s-sewers.” Bill shares a look with Mike.

“How’d you get in the sewers? Did you flush yourselves down the toilet?” Richie asks, he’s rubbing his side with one hand where Eddie kicked him, but he’s still holding out the rubbing alcohol in his other hand.

“We got stuck in the Iron Works,” Mike says.

Stan has a lot of follow up questions, but part of him doesn’t want to ask.

“You went to the Iron Works?” Ben asks. He reaches for another twinkie and it makes Stan realize how hungry he is now. “What was it like?”

“Just old, mostly.” Mike shrugs. “But it’s in pretty bad shape… I wouldn’t go there again.”

“Y-yeah,” Bill says. “That’s why we had to go out through the sewers.”

“Ben and I found an old bunker,” Beverly says. “It was pretty small. Kinda gross though.”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t go back there either,” Ben says.

Stan has the oddest feeling that no one is really saying everything they want to, or exactly what they mean, but maybe it’s enough.

At least they’re all together again. That makes him feel a little safer.

Mike clears his throat. “I brought cards.” He tosses a deck into the center of the blanket where it lands between a bag of chips and a pile of sweets.

“Anybody know how to play Slapjack?” Ben asks.

“I do!” Richie grabs the deck and opens the box.

“M-me too,” Bill says.

“I don’t,” Beverly says. “How many people can play?”

“All of us.” Ben shrugs.

“I c-can teach you,” Bill says.

Bev’s face lights up.

“I don’t know how to play,” Eddie says, he stuffs the rest of the twinkie in his face.

“Okay,” Richie says with feigned exasperation. “How about we do a big practice round for you big babies who don’t know how to play, and then we’ll play for real.”

They end up having to do two practice rounds, because between Richie and Bill the instructions are a bit confusing, but Ben explains it the second time and after that they play a few rounds.

The sun creeps down but the shadows are empty now, and Stan eats so much junk food it gives him a stomach ache. His hand hurts from everyone slapping cards at the same time, and his ears ring with the sounds of laughter and Eddie and Richie’s arguing.

Stan doesn’t win once, but he still has a lot of fun.


	14. Richie Tozier and the Things He Didn't See

“I s-saw something. Again.” Bill says. He says it like he’s been thinking about saying it for hours and only just worked up the nerve.

It’s almost dark, and Mike is putting the cards away after Richie won for the third time in a row. He wasn’t cheating, it’s not his fault he’s good at the game, but he can’t blame them for being jealous.

“What?” Beverly asks.

“I-in the Iron Works,” Bill says. “Mike saw it too, right?” He falters.

“I saw it,” Mike says. He turns the deck of cards over and over in his hands. “Big burned metal…”

“M-monster,” Bill finishes.

Richie frowns.

This again. Still, it’s not like he doesn’t believe them. He just… hasn’t seen anything.

“And the clown,” Mike says.

Bill’s head turns so fast Richie thinks he hears it snap. “Y-you saw the c-clown?”

“In the sewer. Just when we got out. Just for a second,” Mike says.

Bill exhales shakily.

“I saw a – a man,” Eddie says. Richie tries to catch his eye, but he looks away. “He was all rotting and he was just a torso. And I saw that woman.”

“What woman?” Ben asks.

“Stan,” Eddie says. “I saw her.”

“Yeah.” Stan’s voice cracks. “I saw her too.”

Beverly looks from Ben to Bill. “We saw something. I don’t know to explain it. Everything was dark but…”

“But there was something there,” Ben says.

“Why does It do this? It’s so…” she trails off. “Mean.”

Bill turns to look at Richie.

“What? I didn’t see anything,” he says. He almost doesn’t wish it were true.

“You didn’t see anything when you went into the basement?” Eddie asks, and he finally looks at Richie again.

“Just your skinny legs.” Richie shrugs.

“I h-hate It.” Bill sounds miserable.

Richie wants to reach out, or say something to make Bill laugh, but he can’t think of anything for once.

“You guys wanna just watch a movie next time?” Ben asks.

Beverly laughs. “I think that sounds pretty good.”

At some point, Mike’s grandfather comes out to call Mike back inside, and that’s their queue to go.

“I had a lot of fun, guys. Even with the…” Mike trails off. “Thanks.”

“No, thank YOU,” Richie says. And maybe next time they’ll be able to make it through a whole day without clowns.

Eddie does a double-take at his watch. “My mom’s going to kill me.”

“W-we should probably hurry then,” Bill says, before Richie can open his mouth.

Probably for the best, Richie hadn’t planned what he was going to say.

They ride back in relative silence, following Eddie’s directions back into town. Eddie always seems to know where they need to go.

They hit Ben’s house first, and he hugs each of them before he leaves.

“I could get the map for Old Derry,” Ben tells Bill, carrying on some conversation Richie hadn’t been paying attention to. “They have the slides at the library.”

“C-can you?” Bill asks.

“Yeah, give me a few days. I’ll call you when I get it.” Ben trips on his way up the porch stairs and turns to wave awkwardly. “I’m okay!”

They wait until he actually manages to get inside before leaving.

They stop outside Beverly’s next, at the corner out of sight of the building.

“Thanks, guys,” she says. “See you tomorrow?”

“Y-yeah,” Bill says. He stares after her for a moment, and then looks down like he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t.

Richie rolls his eyes. His crush is super obvious, and it would be cute if it weren’t so damn annoying.

Stan asks them to take him by the synagogue, as though they’re some of kind of escort service.

Richie makes a bad joke about it, but Stan just tells him to shut up.

Stan’s father is always there until late, Richie knows, and Stan says he needs to practice more, he can’t even get past the opening prayer yet and he’s starting to get nervous.

He stops to give them each a hug before he goes inside, and he squeezes extra tight.

Richie thinks maybe Stan saw something more than he let on, but he won’t push the matter.

They go to Eddie’s next, and his mother is out on the sidewalk before Eddie is even off his bike.

“Do you have any idea what time it is? I almost called the police!” She takes one of Eddie’s arms and pulls him towards the house.

“W-we’re sorry, Mrs. K.,” Bill says.

She ignores him. “And what happened to you? You know how delicate you are and then you go and do this?” She pulls at the hem of his t-shirt.

“I’m fine, mommy,” Eddie says. His face is red, and he looks like he wants to sink into the ground.

“See you tomorrow?” Richie asks, just to see a little bit of hope in his friend’s face.

“Eddie has to rest tomorrow.” Mrs. K. pulls Eddie back to the house, leaving his bicycle on the grass.

Eddie looks miserable, and Richie feels a sharp burning anger at Sonia Kaspbrak.

Bill swallows hard. “Guess we should have gotten home earlier.”

“She needs to loosen up,” Richie says, so he doesn’t say something else. He has half a mind to sneak over the next day just to spite her.

And then it’s just him and Bill and the silence of the hour as they ride to Richie’s house. His sister is in the window, playing with their cat when they get there.

Bill stares at the ground. “Goodnight,” he says awkwardly.

Richie hugs him for being stupid, and then goes in to take the cat away from his sister, and to tell her that he fought a giant spider and that’s why there are webs in his hair.


	15. Bill Denbrough and the Unfinished Ending

And then it’s just Bill.

He walks his bike the rest of the way home. It’s not far anyway, he’s been neighbours with Richie as long as he can remember.

His own house is dark, the porchlight switched off, and his parents already upstairs.

He puts his bike away, and slips in, not bothering to turn on the lights, he doesn’t want to see anything anyway. His house is still so empty and silent.

He wishes Georgie were there to ambush him and beg him to tell him a bedtime story, all jealous of Bill having been gone all day, and his mother would make them hot chocolate and stroke Bill’s hair and tell him that really he has such a rich imagination.

His eyes fill with tears in the dark and he sniffles.

There’s no point crying over it again.

He calls out to tell his parents he’s home, and his dad gives him a half-hearted lecture and a half-hearted hug goodnight.

But there’s nothing else in the empty house, and he puts himself to bed alone and hopes that maybe tomorrow will be better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I really hope you enjoyed it! 
> 
> Bonus points for everyone who made it this far, and for everyone who spotted the 90s miniseries references, the Buzzfeed Unsolved reference, and/or the references to Fukunaga and Palmer's earlier script drafts.
> 
> Now go play in the sewers!


End file.
